In the fourth section, “Posthumous: a chapbook,” subtitled “The Book of Imaginary Fathers (Incomplete) by Felix Kaye,” Cook writes a series of plays reminiscent to the one Robert Kroetsch wrote in his collection The Hornbooks of Rita K (Edmonton AB: University of Alberta Press, 2001), writing the archivist Raymond, seeking out the disappeared poet Rita Kleinhart through her poem-fragments. It begs the question, how closely connected are these two Winnipeg poetry collections, these two poets, neither from Winnipeg, but who lived in the city during the composition of each collection, and why are they articulating such a city of voices? As the brief introduction to the chapbook/section begins:

The poet Felix Kaye, as many people know, died last year in the middle of a poem. This is not to say that he was writing a poem when he died, but that he was living it. Somehow he had gotten himself right in between the lines and it killed him. Art killed him.

Requiescat in pace.

It is our great privilege to publish as a chapbook, the handful of poems left with his editor when he died. The Book of Imaginary Fathers was his working title and, given the importance of the father as subject and symbol in his poetry, we can think of no better. Our thanks are due to his amanuensis, Ms. Em Cook, whose assistance with the selection and assembly of the posthumous material has been invaluable.

It is as though A Walker in the City is a book of distances, of removals. Who or whom is Cook seeking through the displacement of names in this section, “Posthumous: a chapbook,” the fictional Ms. Em Cook, the fictional Felix Kaye, or for a specific father, using the distance as comfort, or so much smokescreen? The first of Cook’s poems by “Felix Kaye,” a series of questioning, pithy and wry pieces, writes:

God Father

A harlequin argument for the existence of God.

Much patched in patterns of blindness and its dark opposite,

insight.

For what would freedom be were the dead not also liberated?

At least the ones who live within us.

(Perhaps there are no others?)

In our disgraces dwell also our graces.

I’m intrigued at the idea of Cook writing out a series of poems in voices not her own, whether in this section or in the final section of the collection, “Last Poems (from Loitering With Intent by F. Kulperstein),” much the way Ottawa poet Stephen Brockwell has been over the past few years, from his work-in-progress “Impossible Books” to The Real Made Up (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2007) and earlier Fruitfly Geographic (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2004). But still, this is, first and foremost a book of walking, and Cook explores various aspects of what accidents the mind might wander into during such, with one of the most intriguing sections in the collection being the second, “The Beautiful Assassin: A Poem Noir,” that begins: